And we're not even on the topic of my first name yet. Relentlessly misspelled, mispronounced and misgendered, my first name has been an experience. Example 1: A recent job rejection letter addressed to Mr. Sugi Ganeshananthan. (It's hanging over my bed, the "Mr." circled in red.) Example 2: This past pre-frosh weekend, I went to dinner with three friends from high school. We were at Uno's, and the hostess had an abnormal amount of energy. The restaurant was crowded with a mixture of what looked like prefrosh and frosh. It had been a long day and we were hungry. "Four please," I said.

"Name?" the hostess asked, looking up expectantly. I hesitated for a moment, turning back to my friends, tired and not in the mood to be called "Susie." The male among us just laughed, but one of the two women came to my rescue. "Emily," she said, stepping up.

The hostess handed her a timer with a name on it, telling us it would be about 15 minutes. We sat down and Emily shook the timer. Then she laughed. It said, "Elimy." You see my point.

But strangely, my name crops up where you would never expect to find it. Granted, I never find a Sugi mug or keychain or for that matter, a Sugi anything in the card store aisle with all the name merchandise. (There are about a zillion variations of the name Alissa, though. Alisa, Alysa, Alyssa, etc.) But there's a restaurant near Fort Lee, N.J. with my name. I've never actually been there myself, but a friend handed me an advertising card. "Fine Japanese Cuisine...Sugi features Six Tatami Rooms accommodating up to 20 people." What? There are at least 100 Sugi's on America Online. Sugi.net is a Web site. I hope to buy sugi.org upon graduation. Or maybe ganeshananthan.com. I'm torn. I'm pretty sure no one would ever make it to ganeshananthan.com because they'd forget that pesky second-to-last "n."

So what, in the end, do I think of my name? What should I do when I get married, for example? Keep Ganeshananthan? Change? What if I marry someone with a really long last name? Oooh, I could hyphenate. The excitement!

No, I don't think so. I like my name the way it is. Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan is a freshman in Holworthy. Have we spelled it right? The key is copy-and-paste.